In a summer of Oppenheimer mania and UFO hearings that both reanimate mid-century American curiosities and curiosity in mid-century America, Asteroid City serves as a worthwhile constellation point, even if its exact location has been purposefully Dopplered through Wes Anderson's most meta framing device to date.
Rooting itself in television playhouses, Asteroid City gives itself ample space to be a production, and Anderson fills those open panoramas with a Blammo!-brand Los Alamos painted with all the colors of the toy box. The core story, which in typical fashion thinly papers over slouched plaintiveness, involves ostensibly a science fair victory lap that brings together broken hearts, governmental suppression, and overachieving youths in the American West.